Business leaders have long been tasked with maximizing the potential of human intelligence. But in 2025, they will not only manage people's minds. Leaders must take advantage of the competitive advantages of AI and enable human employees to effectively use technology to steal marches with their rivals.
Most companies use AI with a certain level of capabilities. A survey by McKinsey & Company found that 78% of organizations use the technology in at least one business feature. However, early experiments have isolated fragmented cutting tools in various areas of the business on their own. And while this may have been a necessary entry point for enterprise AI, companies must evolve their approach as markets and technology mature.
Isolated tools such as AI-powered customer service chatbots are designed to solve specific niche problems rather than drive transformation across the enterprise. This means that there is little or no chance of reuse in the context of various organizations, limiting ROI. It also creates complexity in the form of siloed data, technical debt caused by the use of multiple tools and models, and potential security risks in the absence of transparency and control.
AI Tool v AI-native Approach
Simply using AI tools is not enough to stay competitive in the long term. After all, most companies now have access to the same technology. Instead, the competitive advantage is seized by companies that become AI natives. This means moving away from treating AI as another product or as a bolt-on tool for isolated issues. Instead, businesses should be embedded at the core of their businesses, decisions and processes to build new products and services.
John Clark helps businesses navigate this change. He is a senior technology consultant at Telana, a leading provider of AI, data and cloud technology solutions. The company helps businesses leverage the full potential of AI technology to solve business challenges. Clark says leaders must start by adopting the AI-Native mindset. This includes not only data, but also the entire organizational view, including effective use of data, increased workforce and adopting a continuous learning approach.
“Leaders are passionate about using AI, but a technology-driven approach has made many uses a mistake,” says Clark. “When you're designing a new product, service, or process, leaders need to understand whether there's actually a business case to solve,” says Clark. “Is AI the right solution? Do you increase revenue? Do you drive change across your business? How do you measure it? What are the metrics? My job is to get into that detail with a leader and measure the potential impact of AI solutions on operational efficiency, risk and revenue.”
Building an AI operating system
Once you answer these questions, the next step is to create the infrastructure you need to drive AI-native transformation. This includes building an AI operating system (OS) that acts as a central hub and nervous system for your business. The purpose of AI OS is to intake, consolidate and extract insights from enterprise-wide data by connecting all departments and taking into account workflows that integrate key platforms such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning.
The richer data sources from across your organization, the more insights and different questions you can ask
This allows businesses to weave AI into the fabric of their entire business. It is a culture that prioritizes the products and services offered to customers, internal processes that drive day-to-day efficiency, the skills and mindset of those who use it, and data-driven, AI-informed decisions. In short, the OS creates an intelligent engine for running business, the default way AI develops.
Clark says that a central OS generates intelligent and profitable insights that cannot be delivered, cut off, detached, simply unable to deliver. “The ultimate goal is to build a platform, agent, and repository of data built through AI models,” he says. “You can start answering multiple types of questions that you might want to ask about that data. The more data sources you have from across your organization, the more insights and different questions you can ask.
AI-Native Business in Action
Telana helps traditional businesses like Channel 4 run like AI natives. In partnership with broadcasters, Telana supports Channel 4's ambitions to help small brands create television ads using generated AI. This initiative will help address key market challenges. This is the high cost and complexity of producing advertising, a historically major barrier to small brands.
According to Telana, this AI-Native approach allows these companies to punch beyond their weight. By using AI models to generate broadcast quality ads, TV ads are made more accessible. The next step is to integrate AI into every stage of the creative process, from ideas and storyboards to compliance checks and publishing.
For AI-Native startups, this is already their reality. This new generation of companies has AI at the heart of its core. AI is a product, a major workforce, and often a key decision maker. Algorithms are the brain that finds market gaps and generates product ideas. You can also write and deploy code. Customer support and acquisitions are also handled by AI, while financial decisions and transactions are made by AI agents. In these businesses, humans oversee tasks, but don't do them.
These startups provide competitive warnings to legacy organizations. Such companies act as data points for continuous improvement on a transaction-by-transaction basis or click-by-click basis. They can make faster and more accurate decisions across key features such as finance, operations, and marketing. The forecasting model also minimizes risk by detecting forecast errors and potential customer terminations in advance.
Companies that can quickly adapt to this intellectual new reality will thrive in the AI-Native future. Those who don't are left behind by competitors who learn, adapt and grow at machine speed.
For more information, please visit telana.com
Business leaders have long been tasked with maximizing the potential of human intelligence. But in 2025, they will not only manage people's minds. Leaders must take advantage of the competitive advantages of AI and enable human employees to effectively use technology to steal marches with their rivals.
Most companies use AI with a certain level of capabilities. A survey by McKinsey & Company found that 78% of organizations use the technology in at least one business feature. However, early experiments have isolated fragmented cutting tools in various areas of the business on their own. And while this may have been a necessary entry point for enterprise AI, companies must evolve their approach as markets and technology mature.
Isolated tools such as AI-powered customer service chatbots are designed to solve specific niche problems rather than drive transformation across the enterprise. This means that there is little or no chance of reuse in the context of various organizations, limiting ROI. It also creates complexity in the form of siloed data, technical debt caused by the use of multiple tools and models, and potential security risks in the absence of transparency and control.
